Shchepkin, Viacheslav

Born May 25 (June 6), 1863, in Timonino (Nikol’skoe), in what is now Moscow Oblast; died Dec. 2, 1920, in Moscow. Russian Slavicist, linguist, paleographer, and historian of ancient Russian art. Corresponding member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences (1913). Grandson of the actor M. S. Shchepkin.

A student of F. F. Fortunatov’s, V. N. Shchepkin graduated from Moscow University in 1885. He became a professor at the university in 1907 and at the Advanced Courses for Women in 1906. In 1887 he took up a position at the Historical Museum in Moscow, where he devised a scientific cataloging system for the Department of Manuscripts and Books in Old Russian Typeface. Shchepkin’s master’s dissertation, Treatise on the Language of the Savvina Kniga (1898–99), was a major study of the phonetics of Old Church Slavonic. His doctoral dissertation, The Bologna Psalter (1906), dealt with the phonetics and morphology of the Middle Bulgarian work and presented valuable material for the study of Old Bulgarian dialects. Shchepkin’s works include Introduction to Slavic Studies (1914), Textbook of Russian Paleography (1918), and studies of the Novgorod school of icon painting.